Melee + Ranged weapon sets seems to have less synergy with each other than Melee + Melee weapon sets tbh. I prefer Melee + Melee with the thereby needed gap-closers.

What use would having 2x melee set have, offensive and defensive ? With all the chills and cripples and immoblizes and blind conditions being thrown around a good ranged weapon imo would be 'nice to have' but I haven't looked much into it.

What use would having 2x melee set have, offensive and defensive ? With all the chills and cripples and immoblizes and blind conditions being thrown around a good ranged weapon imo would be 'nice to have' but I haven't looked much into it.

Well, when running with 2 melee sets you can weapon swap to optimize the use of cooldowns. But when you swap to a ranged weapon set, you will want to get out of melee range which could be a problem on its own, and otherwise you will need to get into melee range again when swapping to your melee weapon. I hope it is somewhat clear what I mean.
I imagine it with a hammer/1h sword warrior: you blow all cooldowns of your hammer, swap to sword for new cooldowns and gap-closers and then back to hammer again for knockdowns. Swapping to a ranged weapon could have caused problems. I'm thinking mostly about PvP here though and I guess Melee + Ranged will work as well in some situations. Offensive and defensive weapon sets are definitely nice to have too. And I'm a little bit biased towards melee.

I'm gonna hate that. :/ Even though I have pretty low ms, ranging from 26-80 or something, I can run right behind someone and still not be able to hit him sometimes while playing WoW. Having my ability go off but not hitting the person even though I'm visually right on top of him seems annoying.

Well, I think your problems will be a bit less Oph. Since in WoW you ping the server, to ping the player you're hitting, and then the signals have to go back.
In GW2 I imagine that your abilities will just ping the area of the server they go off in, and if anyone stands there when the ping goes off they'll be hit with the damage.

I am by no means a developer and have only read about 200 hours of very basic programming (C++ being selftaught rudementary basic). But at least that's how I imagine I'd go a head with it. Since less lines going in between etc, etc, makes for smoother scripts.
Then, after the damage hits the hit player only needs to send back the new HP value.

So, WoW at how I imagine it is:
Ping server for attacking target -> Server pings Target -> Target pings server -> server pings attacker. Sure, this generally takes less than a milisecond, but you can see where I'm coming from. Then we have the thing again with, if the ability connects. Target pings server new Hp value -> server pings everyone who see's it the new value... Etc

As, I'd imagine GW2 will be doing it.
Player pings server about attack covering <area> -> Server check if any targets are in <area> -> Server pings affected players that they got hit.

I don't take the last step, since in this case it doesn't matter.
In one way it matters yes, since you'll get the "out of range message". But it doesn't matter since basicly all abilities in GW2 will have some form of area effect. A sweep will hit all targets in the arc, a thrust will hit people standing clumped together more than likely, etc. So that last ping back to the player isn't a nessecity for the ability to go off. You use it, it kicks. Then all the info of what happened when you used the skill can be dealt with smoother/quicker. Since there is no "is target actually in range of ability" ping before all of that.

But, Imight be dead wrong on this. Please inform me if I am.

As, for how lag would affect gameplay I'd look to how lag shows up in FPS games.

I'm gonna hate that. :/ Even though I have pretty low ms, ranging from 26-80 or something, I can run right behind someone and still not be able to hit him sometimes while playing WoW. Having my ability go off but not hitting the person even though I'm visually right on top of him seems annoying.

That can be adusted by setting apropriate size of player hit boxes and reach of melee abilities and by having good server client communication. I'm gonna hate when meteor hits earth as well but it may not happen so why be stressed about it now

Originally Posted by Ghostrider

Well, when running with 2 melee sets you can weapon swap to optimize the use of cooldowns. But when you swap to a ranged weapon set, you will want to get out of melee range which could be a problem on its own, and otherwise you will need to get into melee range again when swapping to your melee weapon. I hope it is somewhat clear what I mean.
I imagine it with a hammer/1h sword warrior: you blow all cooldowns of your hammer, swap to sword for new cooldowns and gap-closers and then back to hammer again for knockdowns. Swapping to a ranged weapon could have caused problems. I'm thinking mostly about PvP here though and I guess Melee + Ranged will work as well in some situations. Offensive and defensive weapon sets are definitely nice to have too. And I'm a little bit biased towards melee.

It has advantages as well however ... imagine hammer/rifle warrior ... he starts with rifle, bleeding, cripling, making enemies vulneable ... once at full rage he switches to hammer, jumps to target location and wrecks havoc on everything. When he blows all cooldowns, gets attention of enemies, gets focused, he retreats and switches back to rifle. Or the other way around ... enemy is cruising your lines, you focus him with hammer, get him low, he starts to run ... now you either can jump to him and get yourself exposed, or you switch to rifle and place a nice cool kill shot in his back

It has advantages as well however ... imagine hammer/rifle warrior ... he starts with rifle, bleeding, cripling, making enemies vulneable ... once at full rage he switches to hammer, jumps to target location and wrecks havoc on everything. When he blows all cooldowns, gets attention of enemies, gets focused, he retreats and switches back to rifle. Or the other way around ... enemy is cruising your lines, you focus him with hammer, get him low, he starts to run ... now you either can jump to him and get yourself exposed, or you switch to rifle and place a nice cool kill shot in his back

True, rifle/hammer is also pretty cool. But that's more ranged, and for stun/KD when in melee to get away imo.
I guess it all comes down to playstyle.

So, WoW at how I imagine it is:
Ping server for attacking target -> Server pings Target -> Target pings server -> server pings attacker. Sure, this generally takes less than a milisecond, but you can see where I'm coming from. Then we have the thing again with, if the ability connects. Target pings server new Hp value -> server pings everyone who see's it the new value... Etc

As, I'd imagine GW2 will be doing it.
Player pings server about attack covering <area> -> Server check if any targets are in <area> -> Server pings affected players that they got hit.

I don't take the last step, since in this case it doesn't matter.
In one way it matters yes, since you'll get the "out of range message". But it doesn't matter since basicly all abilities in GW2 will have some form of area effect. A sweep will hit all targets in the arc, a thrust will hit people standing clumped together more than likely, etc. So that last ping back to the player isn't a nessecity for the ability to go off. You use it, it kicks. Then all the info of what happened when you used the skill can be dealt with smoother/quicker. Since there is no "is target actually in range of ability" ping before all of that.

But, Imight be dead wrong on this. Please inform me if I am.

I don't think it works that way. The "true" location of a player is a server-side information (to prevent possible abuse). Thus, an attack would check/modify the state on the server and then the server would reply back to the attacker and the target (if it actually got hit). I don't see why there are be any principal difference between WoW and GW2 here. If WoW indeed stores the position of the player as a client-side parameter, then its just messed up...

In the end, latency is a big issue for an action-based system like this, but there are also some tricks to deal with it. You could for instance maintain a "fuzzy" coordinate set for each character on the server, that is, each character would not be associated with a singel coordinate, but rather with an area they are likely to be in. Obviously, for someone with high latency this area would be bigger. The server would then do the hit checks based on these areas. This way, you should still hit someone if you or they are lagging; on the other hand, you are also more likely to be hit if you are lagging (which also makes sense actually). It is also possible to do these checks probabilistically, something like: "due to the lag, the probability of the enemy of still being in range is 70% based on your and their last known positions, so we count it as a hit with probability=0.7 using a random number generator". The last one seems a bit arbitrary though... but it would probably result in a rather fair treatment over a course of a fight.